The Dire Circus 2
by raining-down-hearts
Summary: (Resbang 2015 entry! Sequel to the Dire Circus! 1920's fantasy circus AU) Maka and Soul have survived an awful lot together already, but it seems like bad luck isn't done with them yet. When a piece of Soul's past shows up unexpectedly, it causes a chain of events that bring everything Soul doesn't want to remember crashing down on his head.
1. Chapter 1

**Abodement** [uh- _bode-_ ment], _noun._ 1\. A foreboding, an omen. 2. A sign that something either good or bad is about to happen.

* * *

"It's a cougar," said Blair, busy weaving Tsubaki's hair into a fantastical waterfall of elaborate braids.

"It could be a raccoon or something," Liz protested. "Or a wolf."

"Or just the monster," Maka put in, yawning.

"It's a _cougar,_ " Blair, the feline expert, repeated firmly, looking haughtily down her button nose at them all.

Soul snorted, sitting across the crackling fire from all of them . His eyes gleamed opaque rose-gold in the light. "Does it matter? It's obviously big, it's probably got sharp teeth, and it sounds hungry. Nothin' makes a sound like that unless it's hungry."

Maka grinned at him, then got up and walked around the firepit to sit beside him. He scowled half-heartedly when Blair giggled, but he lifted one arm anyway and slung it around her shoulders. She waved away the smoke from his cigarette, wrinkling her nose; he took one last drag, blew it away from her face, then put it out on the bottom of his boot. When she kissed him, he tasted sweetly of smoke and lemonade.

"Got your scythe, bearcat?" he said quietly. The corners of his mouth kicked up, just a little. He still rarely smiled, but it stopped her besotted heart every time.

"Please," she scoffed, staring into the glowing center of the leaping flames until her eyes began to water. "You think I'd forget it?" Ever overprotective, Soul just shrugged.

The thing in the night yowled again, a high, haunting scream like a woman gone mad. The hair on Maka's arms stood up, and her stomach began to flip-flop.

"Cougar," said Blair again, frowning as one of her caged tigers answered its wild kin with a challenging rumble. "She's angry, too."

"I _told_ you all there was something out there!" Pattie shouted, pointing at everyone in turn before spinning her gun around one finger and making them all nervous. Her laughter was as sweet as ever, rising like a chain of silver bells to mingle with the stars, but her smile was too wide and showed too many teeth. Liz, faithfully beside her sister and holding her own gun, was calmer on the outside, but by now Maka knew when the Brooklyn girl was about to ignite.

Soul curled his fingers possessively through Maka's hair, then stood, brushing off his trousers. "Stein and everybody're watching the animals," he said impatiently, jerking a thumb towards the neat line of colorful train cars gleaming dully behind them. "Let's go already. Moon's up."

He was right; they had light aplenty for what they were about to do. They didn't all need to go fight what was probably one lone monster, two at most, but they'd been on the road for a long time now, licking their wounds and brooding. The circus was still smarting from the midsummer's night attack. Now, four months later, their canvas tents were still stained and torn, and the train cars were equally battered. Maka said it gave them 'character' but Soul had his doubts. More importantly, if such a massive army of monsters had happened across them once- or been _herded_ to them somehow in one great pack, as Chrona still insisted was the case- then it could occur again. Lord Death had sent them fleeing north at high speeds, until Harvar's ferocious golden sparks lit up the humming tracks like a gorgeous nightmare.

They'd been running, but finally, in this gentle, forested place, they felt safe enough to rest. The people who lived in this valley needed help, and that was something the circus could give. More than that, the _act_ of helping would be sweet catharsis.

Maka grabbed her scythe from where she'd left it, leaning safe against the indigo-blue shingles of Tsubaki's wagon. The new shaft Black Star had made her was still strange against her palms, strong and sanded silky-smooth, but unfamiliar. He'd made certain she wouldn't get splinters, but the weight was wrong, and the whorls rippling through the wood weren't what she knew. "What about Chrona?" she said uneasily.

Soul regarded her with raised brows, both hands shoved into his pockets. "Chrona's afraid of the dark. You know that."She swallowed. Chrona was more than _afraid_. "They'll be fine with Mira tonight, and Lord Death wants whatever's been eating the livestock around here dead."

She sighed and brushed the back of her hand against his. "All right."

"Come _on_ , bearkitten," Black Star shouted teasingly, appearing from the darkness with a whoop and speeding by them, snatching Tsubaki up by the waist and giving her a twirl. "Let's go kill some big, bad monsters already!"

Maka felt her whole body light up, and her own laugh surprised her. The night was so beautiful that it was hard to believe anything evil could survive in it. The thickly forested mountains all around them were washed in glorious, icy blues, drenched in stark moonlight and nightmare shadows, and the cool winds made the branches dance. There were fireflies blinking in the grass and white moths twirling like lost spirits above the flames. The cougar howled again, closer now, and somewhere else, a branch cracked. Maka held her scythe tighter, closing her eyes to listen to the pounding drumbeat of her own heart. She'd had her memories back for a while now, all of them, and it still amazed her how truly _alive_ being with the Dire Circus made her feel, how much it had become home.

Even if half her life now involved killing humans who'd changed into demons.

It was mad, but also simple. At least, it seemed so, in comparison to her life before Medusa's attack, before her visit to Jack Barrow, before the knowledge of how easy it was to turn men into monsters came to her. They were evil, turned inside out so all could see it, and she put them down before they could hurt anyone else. Easy enough, _almost_ black and white, and at least she had her friends by her side during all the bitter bloodshed.

Still, in her books, the heroes always knew they were in the right with complete and utter certainty. They _knew_ the dragon had to die to free the princess. She only felt absolutely, completely at peace when she was in Soul's arms, listening to the beat of his heart and feeling him sleepily tap out a gentle rhythm on her bones. The rest of the time...

She still hated killing what had once been human, still feared the inconvenient shades of grey. But this was her life now, wild and magical, and she was, had always been, the kind of person to embrace that.

Black Star whirled by and scooped her up, scythe and all. She shrieked in surprise, startled out of her dark thoughts. "Put me _down_ , you blithering idiot!"

"No way!" he bellowed, spinning her in a sickening circle, until the stars blurred into a heavenly mass of glittering, ghost-white streaks. "We're going prowling, Albarn! There's monsters in them there woods!"

She had to laugh again as he flung her over his shoulder and barrelled into the swaying trees, after the rest of their friends. Soul, following behind them at a lazy jog, rolled his eyes.

Maka blew him a kiss, dizzy with joy.

* * *

She'd changed so little, Soul thought, and yet so much.

He sat on the steps of his wagon, head still pounding from the blow he'd taken during last night's rumble, and watched her load up the dogs, laughing as they bounced eagerly around her feet. She was as short and sinewy as ever, deceptively strong, her golden hair grown longer now, and even more addicting to the touch. He caught the smile in her green eyes when she glanced at him.

It wasn't as if he weren't _used_ to Maka being a confusing bundle of delightful contradictions. Confounding him was basically her mission in life. Yet he found himself quietly taken aback when she said things like, "Oh, did you know that our whole entire galaxy's just one out of many?" or, "Can you believe that Mary Shelley was only eighteen when she started writing _Frankenstein_?"

She was so very clever, his new-old bearcat. She read like she breathed, and his poor wagon creaked and groaned, laden in every corner with wobbly stacks of books. He'd been right to think her smart, but that had only been half of it. She was _brilliant_ , and she was so far out of his league that it was frankly ridiculous. Before, he'd known without a doubt that she was special, but he hadn't realized just how bright she shone until he met _all_ of her. The discoveries were intoxicating, but terrifying. Every time she touched him, he found himself doing something ominously close to praying.

She came over, brushing her hands off on her dusty trousers, and awarded him a glowing smile. "Dogs are all loaded."

"Kilik'll get us moving soon, then. About time." He stood up, ignoring the way his vision spun, and went inside. Her scythe was there against the wall, freshly cleaned, but she'd missed a single, bloody fingerprint on the blade.

The monster they'd hunted last night had begged Soul for its miserable life, in words only he could hear.

"How's your head?" she said softly, sliding the bolt of his brand-new door and plopping down onto the bed, toeing her boots off.

"Fine."

"Liar."

"Mostly fine?"

She laughed. "That's better."

"D'you know your laugh's different now?" he muttered, shoving a few of her books out of the way and slumping next to her.

"Happier?" she asked saucily, snagging one of his suspenders to tug him closer before she started rubbing his temples.

He made an involuntary sound of pleasure, gave in, and collapsed entirely, ignoring the spine of _Jane Eyre_ that was digging into his kidney. With the way she read and re-read that thing, it'd fall apart any day now, and then he wouldn't have to duel with it for her attention. "And less afraid."

"I _was_ afraid, all the time, at least a little bit." She poked his nose. "Not anymore, though."

Soul sighed blissfully, then grabbed onto the edge of the bed as the train gave a lurch and started to slowly rattle forward. "What's your earliest memory?" he asked, once they'd steadied out. They had to speak a little louder now, over the rattle and rumble of the train and the humming wind.

Her scarred fingertips paused for a moment against his skin as she thought. The question wasn't as random as it seemed. It was a sort of game they'd played since she first got her memories back. They'd both had to re-learn _Maka_ all over again. For him, it had been a secret delight, asking anything and everything to while away the coldest midnight hours, as their wounds healed and the circus rolled onwards. For her, it had been comforting, a way to weave her past and present selves together.

"I was three or four, I think," she said slowly. Soul laid his aching head down on her lap. "My mother and father were fighting. Shouting, you know. I don't remember what about, but probably another woman. After, we went to town for sundaes, and it was so confusing. I thought they hated each other, but when they wanted to, they lied about it so well… That's my first memory."

"Shitty," he muttered. "I'm still traumatized from meeting your idiot old man, by the way."

"I'm not surprised." She grimaced and huffed out half a laugh.

He decided to turn her attention to something happier. "Next place we stop, we're opening for business, Lord Death said. About time, too!" He was _dying_ to play again. It had been far too long. His red mask and the keys of his piano were gathering dust. "You can get the rubes with that new routine. They won't know what hit 'em. We'll make so much money."

Maka laughed a little, then curled to kiss his forehead. He went a bit cross-eyed, the better to stare at her. "Only as long as I've got my new song to ride to."

He smiled. It only felt natural in her presence. "You know it."

Once, he'd been so afraid, to see her and her blood-red horse moving to his music. Now he only felt anticipation burning his fingertips; that, and her silken-fire skin.

* * *

Four days later, the train ground to a stop and the tents began to go up, swelling like mushrooms in an empty field three miles from a glittering city.

Maka finished helping Mira set up the ticket booth, then went looking for her Soul.

He'd been waiting for her, smoking a cigarette, slouching against the side of the dogs' train car and staring out at the forest through his hair. He looked tired, and she frowned at the cigarette- she hated the smell of them, and he usually tried not to smoke anymore unless he was especially stressed. Yet he seemed calm right now, as if he had all the time in the world just to stand there, breathing ghost-grey curls of smoke into the chilly, late-autumn air and watching the trees shiver. He was perfectly at home in his loneliness.

She became aware that she was staring at him with a start, and he turned to blink at her. "Why does your face look like that?" he said suspiciously after a moment, stomping out his cigarette.

"My face is my face," she said haughtily, hoping to distract him.

It didn't work. He just raised an eyebrow and waited her out, gnawing absently on a nail until she smacked his hand away from his mouth. She tried to slump against the train car for a while and outlast him, but it failed. Finally she mumbled, hiding her smile behind her hand, "I love you."

"Ah, there it is." He snickered, and then he took a deep breath that she pretended not to notice. "I love you too."

The thin braid of red horsehair wrapped around his wrist glowed in the watery sunlight. "I'm so happy," she said quietly, stepping forward and pushing her face into the curve of his neck in a bid to hide her pink cheeks. "I keep thinking- I keep-"

"Thinking it's too good to be true?" he suggested, tugging one of her pigtails with ungentle fingers that made her shiver.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, but I'm glad. I think we can settle now. You know, we've stopped, we're performing tomorrow." It was hard to put into words, but she tried. "It feels like we can go forward now, maybe?" She was so glad to finally have a past, because somehow it made the idea of a _future_ seem much more attainable.

"Mmm," he hummed, and she melted beneath the force of the beautiful, boyish grin he aimed her way. It was an expression she saw so seldom from Soul- the best things about him struggled, always, beneath the guilt. It was also an expression that hurt for all the lost potential in him it implied. Not that she didn't love him exactly as he was; _he_ was the one who felt broken. "I like that."

She grinned back helplessly, and his eyes warmed as he bent to kiss her.

To their right, something crashed. They both jumped, then spun to see.

"We're leaving. No show here," Marie said sadly, wiping her forehead as she kicked the heavy wooden bench she'd just dropped. It flew another five feet.

"Why?" Maka bellowed back, ignoring Soul's wince as he half-covered his ears.

Marie just shrugged, made an annoyed face, and pointed towards Lord Death's dark wagon.

Maka squinted at it thoughtfully. "Guess that's it for actually making some money," Soul said, clearly disgusted. "I'm going to murder someone if I can't play soon."

"Don't be a baby, just go play your piano for the dogs or something," Maka mumbled.

"There's an idea," he snorted. "I'll train 'em to bark in harmony."

She laughed, but she was having a hard time tearing her eyes away from the small black wagon, where so many strange moments in her life had occurred. When she blinked she could almost see Jacqueline's shining, rainbow jewels reflecting against the back of her eyelids. Finally, unable to help herself, she bobbed up on her tippy-toes to kiss Soul on the cheek and walked on down the tracks to knock.

The black door swung open immediately of its own accord, silent on rusted brass hinges.

Lord Death managed, in that odd way he had, to convey a smile, though his mask, of course, didn't move at all. "Hello, Maka," he said amiably. "What's the occasion?"

She stepped inside with a cautious nod, a little amused by the way the ragged edges of his cloak writhed up to touch her boots. Amused until the motions reminded her of Medusa's golden snake, anyway. "Hi." She supposed she might as well dive right in headfirst. "Listen, level with me. How come we're moving on already? We were just getting set up. Everybody's tired." He knew that, of course, but she thought a pointed reminder might be in order. Curiosity might have killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back, and Maka was nothing if not curious.

He started to do his creepy, looming 'shadow of doom' thing, though she didn't think he was aware of it. "Well," he said after a moment, tapping one gloved finger against his arm. "This particular town isn't what I thought initially. I forgot… We'll stop soon, but not here."

She frowned at him and crossed her arms. "What's wrong with here? Is everything okay?"

There was a somber tension in his voice when he said, "No, everything's not okay, and we're leaving as soon as we can. Maka, I'd like to ask you for a favor."

She stiffened. The dim, musty air in his tiny wagon was suddenly more suffocating than ever. Lord Death had been good to her in many ways, but she hadn't forgotten the _other_ things he'd done. "Like what, exactly?" she said finally, trying hard not to sound suspicious.

She failed. He coughed out a soft, raspy laugh, shook his head, then told her, "I'd like you to keep Soul busy until we leave."

"Excuse me?" Maka aimed her gaze at his nose-hole; direct eye-socket contact made her twitchy, though she felt that was understandable.

"Distract him. I don't want him going into the city, or paying attention to it at all. Please."

It was the last word that made her pause. Lord Death was a dignified, scary, complicated man, and he wore his role as ringmaster well. He was always in command, always cool, even when things were completely balled up. To hear the weariness in his quiet 'please', to see the slump of his sharp, bony shoulders-

"Fine," she said grimly, scowling down at her scuffed boots. "But later, you owe me an explanation. Understand? No more lying to me because you think it's better or safer. And if he asks me outright, I'm not going to lie to him. I'm only doing this because it's obvious you're trying to protect him." _Or protect yourself_ , she thought silently, but she didn't say it. Just because she respected Lord Death, and was grateful for his ferocious protection, didn't mean she liked how easily he manipulated people.

The strange, empty mask looked at her inscrutably, shining like the moon in the dark. "Thank you, Maka. I'm grateful. You know, you remind me more of your mother every day."

"Can the sweet talk," she snapped, storming out into the blinding sun and only just refraining from slamming his door.

Twenty minutes later, with Soul nowhere to be found, Maka was standing next to the railroad tracks, staring at the distant smoke of the city, confusion and cold fear creeping up her spine.

"He just went to go buy some smokes, what's the big deal?" Black Star said again, waving a hand in front of her face like he thought she might explode.

She didn't know _why_ Soul needed to stay away from this place, but whatever was going to happen, she had to be there for him.

"Gotta go," she choked out, taking off at a dead run.

* * *

NOTES:

When Maka references 'galaxies', plural, it's something she realistically could have known. In 1923, Hubble showed that galaxies exist outside the Milky Way galaxy (our own, containing our solar system and billions of others!). Cool, right? Especially for the '20's.

'Rubes' is circus lingo for the people who come and pay to see the show, i.e. the crowd. Sort of has a mildly mocking, othering connotation.

'Level with me' was then, as now, slang for 'tell me the truth, be honest.'

* * *

WHEW. SO!

RESBANG 2015!

HERE IT IS. The long-awaited sequel to Dire Circus- I hope and pray everyone enjoys it. I've had a really hard couple of months, and if you follow me on tumblr you'll see I've barely written anything, so this was a huge fucking struggle for me. I don't think it's my best work, and I wish it was longer, I wish I'd done better by the original and I hope nobody's too disappointed- I hope you guys are entertained anyway 3 3 It makes me happy to make other people happy!

Oh! Go to my tumblr (raining-down-hearts) to see the art that goes with this story too, by the amazing eisschirmchen! And a big thanks to my betas, fab, odat & wings. Love you guys!

-RDH


	2. Chapter 2

**Delenda** [di-lend-ə] plural noun. 1. Things to be erased, blotted out or destroyed.

* * *

The painted sign just at the edge of the city informed Maka that it was 'Eddystone'.

Eddystone was not quite as big as she remembered Brooklyn being, but it was still pretty damn large, enough so that she skidded to a stop after only a few blocks, frustrated and a little lost already. Carriages rattled past, automobiles puffed along, the noise was deafening, something nearby stank powerfully, and Soul could quite literally be _anywhere_.

"Okay," she told herself, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. There were many different kinds of stores that sold cigarettes, and knowing Soul, he'd be picking up a few other little things while he was in town: medicine for the dogs, toothpaste, bandages for Mira, and the like. He could have gone almost anywhere. "I'm an angry, paranoid loner forced to interact with actual people... Where do I go to get it over with..." She spun around once, twice, then paused.

A handsomely lettered sign pasted on the weathered bricks of a tea shop advertised, "Eden Conlen's Fourth Twilight Jazz Concert," being held, quite conveniently, at the town hall in just under an hour. There'd be lots of shops open nearby to capitalize on the late-evening crowd, selling cigarettes, among other odds and ends- and, more importantly to Soul, there would be good music.

She reached out and snagged a passing man by the sleeve, wincing at her own hurried rudeness. "Excuse me, please, which way's town hall?"

He shook her off and gave her a strange glance, but he pointed her straight down the largest street nearby, a wide, bustling avenue edged with picturesque trees and smooth concrete walkways.

"Thank you very much!" she called over her shoulder, taking off again, boots slipping in the sticky mud as she ran, dodging automobiles. It was too crowded to stick to the sidewalks when she needed to hurry.

Soul was probably just fine. Lord Death was overdramatic at the best of times; surely she was overreacting. What could be so special about this perfectly mundane town? She could tell the lies to everything but her anxious heart, which was pounding away like a drum in her heaving chest. Surely an hour had passed by now...

* * *

The blood-orange sun hung low on the smoky, clouded edge of the city skyline before she found Soul.

He was walking fast down the sidewalk in her direction, hands shoved in his pockets, hair covered beneath a really ugly newsboy cap she'd never seen before. She only recognized him by his tattered, brown tweed jacket and the way her heart leapt into her throat. He actually breezed right past, nearly bumping shoulders with her, and didn't notice who she was.

"Soul. _Soul._ Hey!"

He kept on going, and he jumped a foot when she darted after him and wrapped a hand around his elbow.

"Soul?" she said again, searching his face.

"What are you doing here," he said after a moment, staring off over her head and hunching his shoulders.

Maka rattled him around a little until he met her eyes. His were pink and sore-looking; he'd been crying. "What happened? Are you okay?"

He looked away again, and try as he might to hide it, his pain was very close to the surface. "Lord Death, uh, sent you, didn't he? He remembered _Eddystone_. Bit late..."

She winced. They were standing smack-dab in the middle of the sidewalk, and people were going around them, but they were still garnering more than a few annoyed expressions.

"Where'd you get the hat?" she asked, tugging him carefully into the mouth of a nearby alley. She glanced down it automatically, half expecting to see a girl dying with her throat slit, as she still did in her nightmares, but there was only a brick wall and a stack of rotten planks. A milk-white cat appeared then disappeared, from nowhere to nowhere, a jewel-eyed evening ghost.

"Bought it off some kid," Soul mumbled.

"Why?"

He laughed like a scream. She thought that he'd never looked more like a lost little boy. "Well, the hair's a bit of a tell- I saw my brother. I didn't want him to see me."

" _What?_ Where?" She'd clapped a hand over her mouth; not the calmest reaction, but she was shocked to her core. She couldn't stop clinging to him, and she didn't know if it was to give him comfort or to stay upright.

"Oh, he's a big time performer now, not that it's a surprise," he said mirthlessly, all the dark humor instantly gone from his face. "He was always the good one. I do remember that much." He started to say something else, then he shook his head hard, shivered as the wind picked up, and started walking again, ducking back into the flow of foot traffic.

Maka followed, grinding her teeth in frantic worry. It didn't take a particularly large leap of logic to figure out the thing Lord Death had not remembered in time; Eddystone was Soul's original home, a name unspoken for over a decade, long forgotten in all his hectic, pain-blurred past. He'd had bigger things to worry about, he'd been so young, and she knew he hadn't _wanted_ to remember. This was the place where Merriweather's Carnival of the Strange had bought him as a very small boy, it _had_ to be. Perhaps Soul wouldn't _ever_ have recognized it, if not for the ill-fated encounter with his brother. How did Lord Death know in the first place, though? Soul had been with Merriweather's for years before it burned down and he joined the Dire Circus, and the surname 'Evans' was certainly common enough to defeat even a supernatural searcher.

That was a question to be dealt with later, though. Desperate for something to do, some way to help, she took Soul's hand, more than half afraid that he'd simply melt away from her into the shadows, back into his old and familiar agony. Her hand was trembling; his was clammy and, at first, resistant. By the time they reached the outer limits of the city, he was gripping her fingers so tight it almost hurt.

She was half-jogging to keep up with him and his long legs. He noticed after a while, and slowed his pace, but he _still_ wouldn't look at her. He was looking straight ahead at nothing, staring into things she couldn't see.

Maka let him stew the rest of the way back to the circus. She didn't want to speak until she was _sure_ she knew what to say, and she knew Soul well enough to know that this absolutely gigantic shock would bring all his defenses roaring to the surface, the ones she'd fought so hard to get inside. The fresh scars on her fingertips tingled, and her chest ached like old wounds in winter.

His _brother_ , of all things- she'd been expecting a monster, maybe, something she could fight, something she understood. Family was so far from natural to her, despite all her experience with family _problems_ , that she feared she'd be no help at all to him. He'd only ever mentioned his brother a few times, and never fondly- though not with the bitter, despairing resentment that colored his vague recollections of his parents.

The circus was just visible up ahead, the metal of the train glowing warmly in the setting sun's last fiery gasp. It looked as if they'd gotten the big top taken down in record time. One of Blair's tigers roared loudly, making the hair rise on Maka's arms, and a wave of dark birds flew up, a shifting net of shadow against the ethereal lavender sky. Soon the circus would be taking off with the sizzle of Harvar's uncanny power, leaving Soul's family behind once again.

Maka thought of her bumbling father, the one she'd loved so deeply, even when he was nothing but a smiling red smudge and the smell of burnt soup. She thought about Soul's father, tried to picture a man who could give away something so precious and perfect like it was trash.

She didn't try to slow Soul down.

* * *

Maka was squeezing his hand off.

He was fairly sure the small bones were being crushed as she towed him along the railroad tracks to their wagon. The train was hitched up, all the cars neatly in a line and prepared for travel, and the great stacks of folded canvas made a dark, misshapen rainbow next to it, ready to be loaded up. Tsubaki and Black Star were grazing two of the horses by the tracks; they looked up, then glanced at each other and wandered off simultaneously, with their usual unspoken synchronicity.

Soul wondered, a little dazedly, what his face looked like at that moment. It had been a long time since he'd been afraid to look in the mirror. He wasn't sure he'd see anything at all. He felt too insubstantial at the moment to have anything approaching a human reflection.

Maka shoved him into his wagon, slammed the door with a deafening crack, locked it, and then stood in front of him, wringing her hands.

His bearcat was weeping and trying not to, her lower lip trembling, and the sight of her crying for _him_ brought him back, as it always did.

He reached out and took her hands in his, bowing his weary head. He wanted her to hold him so tight it hurt; he wanted to sleep and wake up far away from this place. He wanted to go back and watch Wesley finish his impossibly familiar music, wanted to dream of having been given a smoother path to walk. Nothing inside him was where it should be anymore, and nothing made sense except Maka.

"Soul?" she whispered, eyes huge and terribly green. When she looked at him like this, he'd swear she was seeing into his very heart. The idea didn't scare him as much as it should, and he loved the way her lips moved as she said his name.

"I'm fine," he lied, with great effort.

She freed one hand, pushed her fingers into his hair and angled his face up gently, holding him in place with love and her searchlight stare. "It would be okay if you weren't," she said eventually. "I mean, after everything."

She was being so careful with him- _him_ , still tarnished at the best of times. Wes' music had been so beautiful, and all Soul had felt was anguished fury, from the first note he recognized, from the first curve of that handsome, crooked smile.

He hadn't even known he remembered his brother's face, though it was uncomfortably familiar. He hadn't known until he'd seen it again, after all these years, and everything had come roaring back. If he were to turn his head right now, to look into the tiny mirror he kept for shaving, he'd see a man that looked almost exactly like Wes- but faded, washed out, _wrong_.

His mother had always called them her little twins, despite the four-year age difference, which had annoyed them both. Something else bittersweet he'd remembered out of the blue; lucky him.

The fury was all gone now, drifted away into the evening air. "We're leaving tomorrow morning, anyway," he said slowly, looking out the window, at the trampled grass where the circus had briefly arisen. Though they didn't _need_ to leave, now that he'd discovered the secret Eddystone held for him, he still wanted to, and he was distantly grateful for his Lord's attempt to protect him, too late though it was. "It's over already. He didn't recognize me, if he even saw me. I don't even know what my parents told him. I'm- I'm dead to him. It was a long time ago. Let it go. We're leaving, just- let it go." _Wes never came to look for me_ , he remembered, settling back down automatically into the old pain like a phonograph needle into its groove. He was numb, and grateful for it.

Except he couldn't _stop_ thinking about him, all the deep-buried memories flooding back- Wes' violin lulling him to sleep at night, a skinny, brown-haired boy screaming about _red_ , and another hand holding his as they crossed the busy street, warm and comforting and loving.

Maka cupped his face between her hands and lifted it towards hers, the better to see. She kicked off her boots; Mae West clicked as it fell out onto the floorboards. After a while, she sighed and crawled around behind him onto the bed, opening her arms.

Soul fell into them and shut his eyes tight, as tight as he could.

* * *

He woke from uneasy slumber to the sound of Maka gasping.

She was still asleep, curled in a tight ball with her back pressed to his wall, shoulders shivering.

"Bearcat," he said blearily, shaking her a little. "Wake up-"

She froze, eyes popping open wide. Her hands were in fists, and the very first thing she looked for besides his face was her scythe.

"Had a nightmare," she muttered at last.

"Must have been some nightmare," he prodded, rubbing his face, which felt sore, as if he'd cried hard enough yesterday to hurt.

Tears still shone on her cheeks, and the fear was still there, too, making her ferocious. In the faint blue moonlight she was eerie and strange, as if she was still breathing out air from another world. "There were spiders everywhere- and nobody noticed, they didn't even see them!"

"Ew," Soul said immediately, hauling her closer. "That _is_ creepy."

She shuddered, wiped her face, and then tucked herself beneath his chin, wrapping an arm over his ribs. "Are you all right? I didn't mean to wake you up-"

He kissed her forehead, wrinkling his nose as her bangs tickled. "Go back to sleep." They had plenty to talk about, but they could do it in the morning.

"Okay," she sighed. Not a minute later, she shifted. "Soul?"

"Mmm?"

"Something about that dream felt funny," she whispered, lips tingling as they brushed his collarbone. "I never remember my nightmares, not ever, but this one, it's like I was there. It's like it was real. Everything was so detailed, and nothing except the spiders was _off_."

He pulled his scratchy eyes open to peer down at the top of her head. "It's been a bit of an odd day, you know." Now that was the understatement of the century. "And I only ever remember some of my dreams…I think it's normal." How very strange, that _he_ should be the one explaining what 'normal' meant.

Maka only kissed his neck and pressed closer, fiercely, as if she wanted to keep him safe from everything.

* * *

"What are you staring at?" said Tsubaki.

Maka jumped, then tried to pretend she hadn't. "There's a spider on Morvich's halter."

Tsubaki blinked and looked perplexed. The tiger lounging on her shoulder gave a great, pink yawn of scorn, which sent the beleaguered peacock hiding on her elbow into very colorful hysterics. "So flick it off." She did it herself, then stepped on the nasty little thing. "There."

"Thanks," Maka mumbled, swallowing. Judging by the odd look Tsu was giving her, she appeared just as nauseated as she felt.

Thankfully, Tsubaki was a very, very good friend indeed. She didn't press it. Instead she just combed her fingers through the silky end of her black braid and said, "Do _you_ know why Lord Death suddenly decided we can't stay here? It seems like such a good place to perform..."

"Er-" said Maka, her nausea suddenly doubling. Soul was still sleeping in the wagon as she and the rest of the circus finished their final, early-morning preparations to move on- and Soul the insomniac never, ever overslept, even when she was next to him. Instead he somehow contrived to function on sarcasm, coffee and catnaps. "Well, uh, I- technically, but it's not really _my_ story to tell, if you know what I mean," she said at last, miserably. Soul wouldn't be upset if she talked to Tsubaki about what had happened, he'd know she needed her friend, but _Maka_ wasn't sure she wanted to. Not yet, not before they escaped this awful place.

Something small and dark skittered in the corner of her vision; she jumped.

Tsubaki moved to pull a blade of alfalfa from her grey mare's long, ice-white mane. Her pretty face was scrunched up, but the hand she put on Maka's shoulder was warm. "Are you all right?"

"Yes."

"Then I know what you mean." Tsu flashed a lovely, reassuring smile and patted Maka's arm again before moving to load her horses.

Maka sighed, leaning her head against Aka's coppery neck and tucking her fingers in the extra warm, velvety-soft spot behind his elbows. It was chilly out this morning, a snapping autumn day, and the trees were limned with glowing scarlet. She had such good friends, but the nightmare she'd had- she would keep that to herself, for now. She didn't want to burden them with the dark thing she thought it might mean, not yet.

Something deep inside her chest knotted tight, and her skin prickled. Everyone told her she was brave, but right now, she felt very afraid, and the worst of it was not knowing quite _why._

"When I have a vision, it's just like a dream," Jacqueline had said once, before leaving the Dire Circus to return to her native France. "It's the most terrible thing, dreaming, because you have to watch something happen and you can't change it at all."

"It wasn't a vision," Maka whispered to Morvich, who, used to keeping her secrets, snorted softly in faithful agreement. "That would be stupid. It was just a really bad dream, obviously."

Still, she was so nervous that she couldn't even eat breakfast. Instead she went immediately into the wagon and tucked herself in beside Soul, who was lying there motionless as a corpse, staring vacantly at the ceiling. The train began to move after a while, but Maka was too afraid to let it rock her to sleep.

* * *

A loud _thunk_ and a girlish shriek coming from inside Black Star's wagon stopped Soul mid-knock, his knuckles just touching the wood of the door. "Hey," he called, rubbing the back of his neck with his other hand. He could swear that Eddystone, left behind, was still watching him, a heavy, tangible presence across the miles. "Star. It's me. Tsu in there?"

Black Star appeared after a moment, clutching a boot in his hand and looking rather green about the face. "No," he muttered. "Just a creepy-crawly I had to squish. All those legs, no thank you. What's going on, pianoman?"

"I fucking _hate_ when you call me that," Soul snarled, as a matter of course. Black Star tried to ruffle his hair, Soul put him in a headlock, Black Star promptly wriggled free and punched Soul in the ribs, and then, with their usual friendly greeting out of the way, Soul wheezed, "Nygus wants you to go talk to Lord Death before we take off again." They'd taken a break to water and feed the animals, but their erstwhile ringmaster wasn't showing any sign of calling the train to a real stop, though they'd already passed a few towns.

"What? Why?"

Soul left off trying to fix his hair, which Black Star had made even messier than it generally was, and grunted sourly. "She's started a damn campaign, wants all of us to bother him until he lets us stop and perform. Money this, repair that, everything's falling apart around our ears, the usual… She already got Sid and Stein to go yell at Lord Death, now she's got her sights on us. You might as well just give in. Maka's all about it too."

"Oh, Christ," Black Star said involuntarily, blanching. Maka, with an Important Cause in her head, was absolutely terrifying, and when she joined forces with Nygus? Forget about it. "Let's just do it now and get it over with so they don't Come on, let's blouse."

"I'm _coming_ , don't yank on me-"

"Hurry up then!"

"Not everyone likes to _run_ everywhere, jackass!"

"Life's short and shit! Why waste time?"

"Why waste _energy?"_

They kept arguing as they picked their way over the jagged black chunks of stone that lined the railroad tracks. The familiarity was deeply soothing, and Soul was so caught up in his complaining that when Black Star stopped next to one of the storage train cars, he didn't notice at first.

He _did_ notice when Black Star cocked his head and frowned, then drew an incredibly large, shiny hunting knife from- somewhere? The guy was a walking armory. "What the fuck?"

Black Star shook his head immediately, putting a finger to his lips, then jerked his head towards the car and raised his eyebrows. He'd heard something.

Soul shut his mouth immediately. Black Star was a very funny guy almost constantly, and it was those times when the humor disappeared that a person knew they had to worry. The old, starving darkness rolled like an electric shock over Soul's skin as he let his arm's red blade sing to life.

He realized dimly, through the hunger and fog, that the birds were still singing, and the dogs were not howling. Not a monster, then, or at least, probably not. Chrona still made the dogs whine, but mostly the pack had gotten used to them, odd as they were.

Which meant the unseen danger curling Black Star's lips back from his teeth was human. Soul smiled, too, just as grimly, and they moved towards the car's door together, setting their feet carefully on the rocks to make no noise.

They yanked it open together.

"Oh, hell!" Wes yelped, scrambling back and shielding his eyes from the sudden light as he squinted at them.

* * *

"It's okay," Maka said soothingly, watching the strange, inky shadows writhe above Chrona's bony back, the shredded wings of a fallen angel.

They were terrifying, yes, from head to toe, but Chrona's wolf-pale eyes only looked tired. "Maka," they said, voice cracking. "Are you sure? I don't want to get in anybody's way, I don't want them to stare at me. I don't like that."

"Remember the thing I taught you, for when you get nervous?"

"... Right. If they look at me, it's just because I'm new here, not because they think I'm bad. But… are you sure?"

"I'm sure. I promise nobody here wants to hurt you. And I'll come with you, too."

Chrona took a deep, deep breath, and Maka's heart hurt at the look on their gaunt, shadowed face. "I'll be fine, I'll be fine," they chanted to themselves, and their whole body rippled as they drew their darkness inside. In an instant, they were simply a pale, underfed waif with bruised shins and hair that needed a trim, looking at her with childlike trust.

"You'll be fine," she said warmly, extending her hand. "Come on, get some sunshine before we get moving again."

Chrona had been- after much argument and discussion- given part of the train car that Stein used for his experiments and as a makeshift hospital. The bloodstains stratified on the floor like watercolor rust didn't seem to bother them, and they'd cried shocked tears of joy when Sid and Mira made them a little pallet bed to tuck into the corner, bolted down to survive the train's bumpy ride and very sturdy.

It was all too obvious they'd never had anyone take care of them.

"You _have_ to help Chrona," Maka had told Lord Death, the day after midsummer's night after she'd woken up. She'd been pale still, moving just a lttle stiffly, and she'd somehow known that his eyeless gaze was aimed at her tightly wrapped, throbbing hand. She'd nearly screamed at him, voice high and cold and terrible in a way she'd never known she had, still reeling from the sudden rush of memories, and for her, he had taken the viper to his bosom.

Chrona had done nothing to the circus, but that didn't mean they hadn't hurt _others_. It didn't mean they weren't dangerous.

Maka absolved them of their past sins every time she touched them, though, the exact same way she'd learned to do with Soul. Chrona wove their fingers together and shot her a shy sideways glance as they stepped together into the sunlight.

"Thank you," they whispered furtively, after an audible swallow. "For being my- my friend."

Maka, who suddenly felt much lighter, couldn't contain her wide smile. "Oh, Chrona, you're welcome. You don't have to keep thanking me all the time, you know; I'll be your friend no matter what, that's how it works. And I like spending time with you."

Chrona turned bright pink, which clashed hilariously with their hair. " _Oh,"_ they said softly.

They always looked so startled to see other people wave at them, to see smiles aimed their way, and in the thin autumn sunlight they seemed like a ghost, a faint ethereal presence made of pastels and sighs. She felt as if she needed to hold them down to the mundane earth; she felt too as if she were watching her own amnesia unfold again, seeing Chrona discover the gentler world outside Medusa's control. It was very hard to remember the murders Chrona had committed, when they were giggling at Black Star's monkey faces or happily buried in a pile of excited dogs.

But then, Maka had killed, too.

She rubbed her temples, then pulled her sleeves over her hands to cover the two delicate, tiny scars left by Medusa's snake. The train's shrill horn gave a quick scream, Harvar's signal that the break was nearly over and everyone needed to load up.

"Maka?" Chrona whispered, tugging on her sleeve. "What's that- who's that yelling?"

Maka's heart reacted Soul's shouts before her brain did.

She practically yanked Chrona off their feet, clutching their hand as the two of them took off towards the sound. Chrona's long legs made them faster than Maka, usually, but she was so terribly afraid now that she nearly flew.

The roars condensed into words as they ran further up the train, towards the engine. Marie, Stein, Black Star, Blair, Stein, and Mira had beaten them there, and were all standing in an ominously tight huddle around something.

Maka burst past them, then stopped so suddenly that Chrona ran right into her back.

Soul was there, screaming, snarling- but Soul was over _there,_ afraid, silent _-_

" _Oh,_ " she yelped, when she figured it out. Soul's doppelganger had a hat pulled down over his head, dirt all over his fine suit, and a nervous grimace that she'd _never_ seen Soul wear.

But the rest of it was the same as they stood, mirror images, exactly of a height. The man had Soul's sharp jawline, his large, beautiful hands, his lanky, slouching height-

And, when he finally spoke, Soul's voice. "It's me," the man said, not loudly, but the intensity of it finally shut Soul up. "It's me, Hadley, it's _me_! It's Wes!"

He snapped his mouth shut then, clearly frustrated, and Maka saw the moment when he realized he was surrounded.

She stepped forward, clenching her hands into fists to hide their trembling. Soul looked at her pleadingly; his face was still a mask of fury, but his eyes were wet, red and rich as wine, and tears had streaked his dusty cheeks. The fact that he had _no_ idea what to do was written in every shaking line of him.

Wes swore passionately under his breath- Maka shuddered at the familiarity of it- took another long look around at the ring of somber circus folk surrounding him, and said in the most pained whisper Maka had ever heard, "Mom and Dad need help. Something's wrong with them."

Soul turned to stone beside her. Then he turned away and pushed through the ring of his friends. Black Star caught Maka's pleading look and went after him, and the circus closed ranks again.

Wes wasn't going anywhere.

He knew it, too, because he was sweating visibly, and his cheeks were pink. Perhaps he had some of Soul's natural caution, though, because he only stood there silently, gaze darting all around. Maka saw that a lock of hair had escaped his hat, deep reddish brown.

She stepped forward, crossing her arms, trying to gather herself, trying to gain some control. Soul had saved her life before, she'd saved his- they protected each other, would die for the other, and they both knew it, even as they knew the other didn't _need_ protection. It was born of their love, and so it was with great effort that she held back from breaking Wes' jaw. Violence wouldn't help here. Instead, she aimed for his most obvious weak spot.

"What's wrong with your parents?" she said coldly, letting her voice linger over the 'your' to tell this strange man, wearing a face she loved so much, that Soul was hers now, belonged to nobody else, was a member of no family except the Dire Circus.

He eyed her warily, turning his head just a hair to the side as he looked her up and down, thinking before he spoke. _Just like Soul_ , she thought, gritting her teeth. She heard Chrona, crowding close behind her, heave a shaky sigh, but the fact that they hadn't run away to hide yet spoke volumes about how far they'd come. "Who are you?"

Stein gave a faint, unpleasant laugh, and she heard the crack of a match being struck before she smelled his cigarette smoke. Apparently he'd decided to settle in for the show.

"I would like to talk to my- my brother, please," Wes bit out, when she didn't answer him. He was clearly trying very hard to look cool and collected, but there was mud and hay on his expensive clothing, and here, _he_ was the one who didn't belong, the weak one, the lamb among wolves.

Maka let that knowledge shine through in her humorless smile. "I asked you a question," she snapped, leaning forward. A cloud passed over the sun, and goosebumps rose on her arms. He would tell her everything, and then she would help Soul handle this. She wouldn't lose him to himself again, not ever, not if it killed her. She could remember being the one afraid, being the one who saw threats around every eerie corner of the circus, who saw only monsters beneath the glitter. But that was then, and now she was the strange, beautiful danger. _Nobody_ was going to hurt Soul if she could stop it, let alone his jackass brother who'd decided to stow away on their train, of all things.

Said Jackass shifted his weight uneasily. "I came here to speak to my brother-" he tried. His voice was musical, educated. _He'd_ had the best of everything while Soul suffered.

"No," Maka snapped, bitter fury welling up with volcanic force. Then Wes blanched, and she felt a tell-tale shiver blaze its way up her spine.

Lord Death, melting impossibly out of the crawling shadows- which hadn't been there just a moment ago- put a heavy, gloved hand on her shoulder. The chill grew worse, but the sun came out again, and Wes squinted, thrown into stark relief and looking oddly fragile.

"Explain yourself," Lord Death hissed, and he was out in the open air, but his voice seemed to echo a thousand times in her ears. It wasn't as if they hadn't had people try to stowaway before. It seemed practically the whole desperate country was train hopping these days, looking in vain for greener grass, but he couldn't have missed that this was different.

Wes swallowed audibly, but then he squared his shoulders and narrowed his eyes. His gaze didn't leave Lord Death's bone mask for an instant. It was admirable bravery, really. He looked as if he were about to step off a cliff. "My parents need help. Something's wrong with my father, he's… The doctors don't know. I saw Hadley at my show, I followed him, I- I wasn't even sure it was him, but it was, and he's changed too, just like Dad. I need help, that's all, I'm not here to cause any trouble. I just need him to help us! And I was looking for him, and the train started to move, and… well..."

Maka's fist hit his jaw with a crunch. Marie darted forward to catch him on his way down, murmuring, "Whoops-a-daisy, there he goes!"

"He looks for Soul after all this time, and it's only to _use_ him? To get something for himself?" Maka shouted, baring all her teeth and curling her fingers like claws, and then she spun on her heel and ran after Soul.

* * *

NOTES

"Eden Conlen's Fourth Twilight Jazz Concert" is taken from a real 1920's advertisement I found on the internet. No idea who Eden Conlen is, but I liked the name and the idea of twilight jazz, and I thought Soul might too.

Concrete sidewalks first became popular in the 1920s. Before this sidewalks were sometimes wood, which I suppose is an upgrade from mud.

A 'phonograph' aka record player was invented 1877 and played cylinders not records, which weren't invented by the 1920's yet.

'Let's blouse' meant 'let's go, let's leave now.'

As far as Soul forgetting the name of his hometown: I decided to give things canon ages. Maka's a few months from 18 in DC 2 and Soul is 20, and he was 4 when he was sold to Merriweather's- old enough to remember quite a bit, but young enough to forget just as as much. Hope that makes things more plausible and less confusing.

'Hadley' as Soul's birth name is the headcanon of wingsof-flame on tumblr, who is just incredibly rad and who kindly let me use it. Doesn't it have a nice ring, especially alongside 'Wesley'? Thanks wings! :3


	3. Chapter 3

**Animus** [ _an-_ uh _-_ m _uh_ s] noun. 1. Strong dislike or enmity, hostility. 2. Purpose, intention, or animating spirit.

* * *

"It's okay, man, she punched Soul the first time she met him too," the one called 'Black Star' said, clapping Wes on the shoulder with uncomfortably aggressive force and attempting an incredibly forced smile.

Wes returned the dubious favor, even though trying to smile back hurt his throbbing face. "For a small girl-"

"Yeah, she hits hard," Black Star snickered, whopping him between the shoulderblades again.

"Oof," Wes said involuntarily, staggering. His hat fell off.

"What?"

"Nothing." Wes grabbed up his hat and brushed it off. "Listen, how much trouble am I really in?" That tall, cloaked, masked man- presumably human, at least, though undeniably odd- was still lurking behind the irate, statuesque blonde who'd caught Wes as he fell. Lurking was really the only word for it, too. It was a very actively _sinister_ sort of standing.

Black Star's face went, unexpectedly, quite serious, and a cold sort of glint entered his gaze. "Well, you're holding us up from leaving," he said. "Railroad tracks run on a pretty tight schedule. And you're part of the asshole family who sold their own _kid_ , so there's that."

Things began to spin. "Excuse me?" Wes tried to say, but it came out as a shocked stammer. "No, he _left_ , he ran away. What are you talking about?"

"You think a kid that little ran away?" Black Star sneered. That slight breath of an accent in his voice thickened. Suddenly he looked less like a buffoon and more like someone very dangerous indeed; Wes was reminded yet again of how foolish he'd been, impulsively trying to tag along with his little brother's... job. "Wow, you're stupid. Your parents sold him because of his-" He motioned to his own incredibly odd blue hair, scowling. "And the eyes. The albino thing."

The man in the tattered, white scientist coat materialized, thick glasses shining almost painfully bright. Wes tried and failed to hide his jump. Suddenly he was reminded of an afternoon long ago, watching a neighbor boy burn ants beneath a magnifying lens in the hot sun, squirming with guilt and fascination. "Yes," the man mused, putting his nose in the air and staring down his cheekbones at Wes as if he wanted nothing more in the world than to eat him. "You should turn around and go home, I think. There's a long walk ahead of you."

He'd failed. A _chance_ , out of nowhere, and Wes had let it slip through his fingers- though he wasn't sure what he'd expected, really. He couldn't blame Hadley, if he thought their parents had... _sold_ him. Clearly there had been a miscommunication somewhere, over the years- and who knew what lies these circus freaks had told him? "You'll let me say goodbye to him, at least," Wes bargained, hearing the desperation raw in his own voice and not caring. "Please." He'd grovel if he had to. He'd balled this up beyond belief; he'd lost his brother all over again, and he'd failed his parents.

His father's face flashed in his mind- as it _had_ been, before the changes began, before his teeth turned wolfish and his eyes glassy. Wes clenched his jaw as his eyes began to burn with tears.

The man in the lab coat laughed. It was the most awful thing Wes thought he'd ever heard in his life. "Fine," he said, putting out a hand to stop Black Star from speaking. "Come on, then."

Black Star breathed down Wes' neck as he followed the man in the coat down the railroad tracks, his oxfords slipping treacherously on the unsteady rocks surrounding the ties. The smell of tar was rich and sharp in the air, and each train car they passed was stranger than the last. After a while he paused to glance over his shoulder; the cloaked man was tiny in the distance, but the magnitude of his sharp watchfulness still prickled Wes' skin. _Lord Death_ , he'd heard someone call the man, an ill omen if he'd ever heard one. It was a crisp, bright autumn day, but Wes felt as if he were underwater, staring up at a rapidly fading point of murky light. Each burning breath took effort. What the hell had he been thinking?

A faint memory resurfaced unexpectedly: his mother, laughing, glamorous in red lipstick, scooping up tiny Hadley and whispering, "Wesley's my tall, dark, and handsome, but you're just like Christmas, and you'll be tall too, little love."

"Go on," murmured the man in the coat, jerking his head toward the open door of one of the metal cars, where all sorts of inventive horrors could lurk. Wes twitched nervously, tried immediately to pretend he hadn't, and stepped up to the hip-high door to the man's soft, unpleasant laughter.

His brother sat in the gentle darkness, his ghostly head bowed against the embracing arms of that ferocious blonde firecracker, both blind to any audience. At their feet were at least ten dogs of every possible size and color, all staring anxiously up at their humans. Several furry heads swiveled to stare at Wes, and their eyes shone unsettlingly in the velvety shadows. Hadley did not look; he and the girl were silent, woven together and breathing as one, tangled with each other and aware of nothing else. Wes, looking at them, suddenly felt as though he were in church.

He stepped back quietly as he could, out of the doorway, trying not to roll his ankle on the rocks and make noise. "I'm leaving," he whispered numbly to Black Star and the man in the coat. "I'm going. You're obviously all about to leave- I won't- I'm going. I won't bother him again."

"You'll never speak to him again if you know what's good for you," Black Star said, amicably enough, with another one of those bone-crushing pats on the back.

Wes was beginning to suspect the 'friendly pats' were thinly veiled threats, actually, but he mustered up a false smile again anyway.

"We're leaving soon indeed," said the man in the coat, face twitching like an animal's. "Five minutes. And you'll never see us in that town again."

"All right," Wes said listlessly, turning back towards Eddystone and his dying, terrible father and their ruined company. What else could he do, after trying once and causing Hadley so much pain?

* * *

It had been a long, long day.

Crickets sang gently outside the wagon, and branches rustled like restless sleepers. Canvas from the tents- which were all readied in preparation for the performance they'd _finally_ get to give- flapped now and then in the breeze, and one of Blair's big cats was chuffing eerily at something exciting it had seen or smelled and now wanted to kill. The world wasn't asleep, but it was close, and peace finally felt at hand. Maka curled up into a tighter ball on the bed, marking her place in the pages of _A Farewell to Arms_ with one finger, and watched Soul, who was supposedly stitching up a rip in one of his shirts. Actually, he was frowning down at it without moving, the threaded needle glinting in his hand. It was the only bright thing in the trailer, besides the lantern's flame. There wasn't any light in his eyes.

"You're going to hurt yourself," she whispered. In her head, she tried the name Wes had used, but 'Hadley' slipped off Soul like water. She couldn't make it stick, though she did want to write it down and properly get the look of it.

He blinked, then set the shirt and the needle down before scrubbing at his face. "Yeah. I'm coming to bed in a minute."

That particular phrase was fast becoming one of her favorites; so domestic, so unexpectedly sweet. She pretended she was reading again, too flustered to write his name down in her journal in front of him. He gave the shirt a few more ineffectual stabbings before licking his fingertips and pinching out the lantern.

He was asleep as soon as she put her arms around him, but she felt as if she'd been lying awake forever, as if the sun would creep through the curtains at any moment- but the blackness persisted. Then, mysteriously, the veil thinned. She was dreaming, while vaguely and confusingly aware that she _was_ dreaming, because she certainly hadn't magically flown to moon-washed, mountain railroad tracks, cutting cold and gleaming through an indigo forest.

There was a man walking briskly in front of her, down the tracks. He was tall, parts of him achingly familiar and parts jarringly strange. His hat was on, but he was in his shirtsleeves with his jacket slung over his shoulder despite the chill. And she _was_ cold, despite knowing this was just a dream, that she wasn't running, trying ineffectively to catch up to Wes, voiceless but screaming. It felt as if ice was weighing down her limbs, choking her, blossoming from her lungs as she fought.

Something was in the woods.

Wes had paused with his head tipped back, staring at the stars, and Maka screamed soundlessly as she saw the many-legged thing again, nearly invisible in the shadows but for its brief flashes of lovely blue-black shine. Nothing she did could stop it. A blur of awful motion, a panicked shout that cut off halfway, and Wes was gone. Only his hat lay on the tracks.

She slid almost seamlessly from nightmare to wakefulness, and she had to lay a hand over her own pounding heart to confirm to herself that she was fine.

 _She_ was fine, but part of Soul's family was-

Soul was irritable when she shook him awake, sluggish and confused- _he'd_ been sleeping soundly for once, a small miracle- and she snarled at him impatiently between yanking on yesterday's trousers, shoving her feet into her boots, and snatching up her scythe. He understood at last- not fast enough- and she gasped when they reached the cold night air, the _real_ night.

"A spider grabbed him?" Soul asked again, slouching and goblin-like, squinting blearily.

"A spider, yes, but biiig-" she shuddered, then spun in a helpless, useless circle. "Do we get someone? Should we get Tsu and Black Star? Or Lord Death? I'll have to borrow one of Tsu's horses anyway, for you-"

"A horse! No. Nooo. Maka, listen, just take a second-"

"It was _not_ a dream," she pleaded, setting the lantern down for a moment and pushing the heels of her hands into her eyes. "Soul, please, you have to believe me. Something about this was different. I was _there_ , and something took Wes. A spider- a _thing._ A monster. And you know it's because he was with the circus, it had to be, and we just sent him of, all alone! It wasn't a dream!"

"So what, you're having visions now? Like Jacqueline or something?" he said nastily, and she would have barked right back at him, if not for the scared, wild glint in his eyes. "Sorry," he said a moment later. "Sorry. Shit. Shit, I don't know, this is all pretty weird. And he's- my brother, apparently."

If she left it up to him, he'd take all night to decide. If his brother died, Soul wouldn't _get_ to waffle around about whether or not to accept him, so she plowed ahead as if he'd agreed to everything. "We've got to tell them where we are, anyway, or they'll panic. We won't be back until mid-morning, but definitely in time for the performance," she said, tactfully leaving out the ' if we survive' from the last sentence. "Go, uh, please go tell Black Star- just tell him we need to check, I don't know- and I'll saddle up the horses."

"Okay," he groaned, slumping away into the darkness and leaving her the lantern, since he saw better in the night than she did. He wasn't exactly running, but he wasn't lollygagging either. He was just as conflicted about this as Maka was- and they should have known a pampered rich boy like Wes would manage to find trouble, alone and unarmed.

Something on the back of her neck itched and stung as she double-checked her pigtail ties in preparation for the journey. Nothing was there under her searching fingertips, though.

Morvich, dozing head-to-tail with Tsubaki's youngest palomino, snorted and stepped back when she walked up. He snuffled her over twice with his warm nose before she could grab his halter.

"Don't you recognize me, boy?" she whispered, glad that Soul wasn't around to hear how crazy she sounded. Then she told herself very firmly, _get a grip, Albarn_ , and automatically warmed Morvich's metal bit between her palms.

* * *

Soul and Black Star came yawning around the corner of the big top maybe twenty minutes later, the latter carrying another lantern she recognized as Tsubaki's. She was vastly relieved to see Soul again, though she tried hard to hide it. Part of her kept waiting for him to snarl, "Fuck it," and refuse to help, because- well. The brother thing.

She couldn't blame him if he did decide Wes could handle his own problems, but it was _so_ wonderful when he didn't. And of course he'd decide to come along on her with her crazy, dangerous adventure- he always did. In the end, he was always right there beside her, rolling his eyes and fighting twice as hard.

Black Star said faintly, "Gross," when she pulled Soul in for a quick, grateful kiss before shoving him up onto Morvich, who was slightly more patient and forgiving than Tsu's pretty, golden mare Yume.

"Dry up," Soul snapped moodily, already tangled in the reins; Morvich looked reproachfully at both Maka and Black Star in turn. "Like you don't stick your tongue-"

"We will be back tomorrow, late morning, I think," Maka said hastily, rearranging Soul's fingers into slightly less painful-looking knots. "Okay? Maybe it's nothing, but if it _is_ something, it's just one."

"Are you sure about that?" said Black Star, raising a brow.

"Sure enough that I'm not asking you to come with," she said honestly. Her scythe was strapped across her back at the moment, the blade sheathed in a stiff leather creation of Black Star's- because who else would she go to, when she needed a handy way to haul her second-favorite, handsome sharp thing around? It looked a bit odd, but it worked, which was the pertinent thing. She and Soul would be fine, and he already had that sweet, wild light in his dilated eyes, the one that meant the adrenaline and her stupid idea were finally infecting him too; she grinned to herself. It lasted about a second, until she remembered that horrible, nightmare shape lurching through the trees towards Wes' unprotected back.

But they'd seen _things_ following the circus, too, since the battle on midsummer's night, flashes in the night and howling that never came from any natural creature. Not every day, not even every week, just often enough to make them all nervous. Chrona seemed to feel it most, perhaps unsurprisingly, and Maka sighed. She hadn't _wanted_ to admit it to herself, and since nobody else had said anything, she'd assume they'd all been sharing blissful, deliberate denial.

The circus, such a long-time thorn in the side of evil, was being followed. They'd simply seen too many monsters, too often, while on the run, far more than would have been usual before. Chrona was _right_. That bitch Medusa had somehow brought a whole pack of monsters down on them in a great wave, working off the power of the year's longest night. Since then they'd been running, yes, fast as they could without pause for breath, but none of them had lost that spine-tingling horror. Medusa was dead, but it wasn't _over._ Someone else on the side of the bad guys was still pulling the strings.

And now this. She rubbed her temples and tried to stop anxiously chewing her already rather tattered lip.

"Okay," Black Star mumbled, shaking his head before giving her one last pointed, warning glance and a pat on the knee that she sorely needed. He took the lantern. There was enough moonlight tonight that they'd see well enough, once their eyes adjusted- and the horses would see even better as they followed the train tracks back towards Eddystone.

She kiss-kissed to Yume, who flicked an ear sleepily back at her, then lurched into an incredibly passive-aggressive, slow-motion walk- but Soul whooshing past on Morvich like a scarlet meteor, completely uncontrolled, woke her up quick enough. The first mile or two of the trip was spent gingerly offering Soul alternate advice and sympathy as he bounced about in the saddle, cursing through gritted teeth. At least it took both their minds off Wes, family, and the day's general bleakness.

Eventually Morvich gave in and remembered his manners. By the time the moon had hit its highest arch and was slipping back down in the richly raven-dark heavens, they'd settled into nervous silence. It made Maka feel even more like an intruder in the deceptively busy mountain forest. The soft breathing of the horses, the squeak of the leather, and the rough rhythm of their steps all seemed overloud against the night's vivid tapestry of delicate sound. Her ears were buzzing after hours of straining to listen.

She looked over at Soul, nudging Yume into a ground-eating trot as urgency nipped her heels again. He was slouching in the saddle with his head tipped back, looking up at the stars, the scant color in him gone entirely in the moon's seductive, lunatic glow.

The family resemblance was undeniable.

"We can still turn around," she offered, closing her eyes for a moment. "You don't owe him anything. You don't _have_ to do this." Was she pushing him into something he didn't want? She _knew_ she was overbearing sometimes, bossy and stern and overly convinced of her own righteousness, and she knew that Soul had to find his own way through his darkness. Her love couldn't carry him completely, even if she'd wanted that sort of consuming pressure.

He blinked, came back down to earth, and raised a silvery eyebrow at her, looking astonishingly fey for such a serious moment. She decided dazedly that Soul and moonlight were a dangerous combination indeed. "What, Maka Albarn wants to leave someone who needs help? I don't _think_ so, Miss Martyr."

She breathed out a slow, thankful breath. "Let's just look at it that way for now, then," she offered. "Just a last-minute rescue mission for some dummy who got himself in trouble."

"Right," he mumbled, bouncing around and clutching at Morvich's mane desperately. "I wish that fucking _bird_ would shut up."

"Bird?"

He gave her a mild glare, slipping sideways briefly and scrabbling for the saddle horn. "The loud one? That's been making that fucking- that _sound_? It's the loudest thing-"

"At night?"

"Listen, you can't hear that-"

Maka pulled Yume to an immediate halt. "There's no bird, Soul," she whispered, ice-cold terror washing over her skin. " _I_ don't hear anything." Neither did the horses; usually they seemed to have some sort of sixth sense for things with evil intent, but they were both calm and relaxed, moving easily with pricked ears. She flexed her hands and squinted hard all around, trying to see if she recognized this particular stretch of railroad, if this was where Wes had been ambushed. They'd been riding for a while, and she didn't think he would have been able to walk much further than they'd come already.

Soul yanked Morvich to a stop too, albeit with less finesse, and slid clumsily off. In a heartbeat, she was next to him, boots planted firmly on the ground as the familiar scarlet glow of his blade reignited, ghostly and glorious. "It's right over there- oh. Fuck!"

"What?" she hissed, wrestling her scythe free with one hand, gripping Yume's reins with the other, fumbling away precious seconds in the dark while God knew what lurked. Wasn't _that_ just the story of her life.

"If I can hear it, and you can't, then it's _probably_ -"

"A monster," she finished in resignation, gritting her teeth as she finally pulled her scythe free. Of course she'd known, because nothing on this continent that God ever meant to create was as big and fast as what she'd glimpsed, but this was even more proof. Maybe she _should_ have let Black Star come- but she hated to leave the circus without one of its strongest fighters, after what they'd been through already. She'd just have to manage.

Soul sighed shakily, then looped Morvich's reins tightly over a branch. The two of them edged slowly away with cautiously dragging feet, hampered a little despite the moon's most heroic efforts. But they needed to be far enough away from the horses so that- hopefully- nothing would hurt them. "I was getting to that."

"You talk too slowly," she muttered, turning to protect his back. She'd stared into the night too long, and she was beginning to imagine shadowy shapes in the blackness, beasts to match every rustling branch. Her scythe was comforting, though.

They waited. Nothing happened, though a low, moaning wind rose for a moment, fuelling Maka's runaway imagination. She leaned back until she felt Soul's shoulders strong and warm against her own.

"Think it's the one that took- Wes?" he breathed, boots crunching on rough rock. Soul said his brother's name stiffly, halting on an upward lilt at the end, as if he weren't certain he wanted to stick with the nickname or not. Then, quite suddenly and before she could even begin to answer, he snarled soundlessly and kicked the dirt in a fit of temper, hands curling to fists.

Morvich tossed his head up just then, ears pinned and nostrils flared in alarm. Yume, less trusting, began pawing at the ground, clearly quite finished with the entire unorthodox situation.

Something was very near indeed.

Any clue about their opponent could be valuable. "Is it saying anything, um, actual words you can-" Maka started to whisper, eyes welling up as she stared unblinkingly at nothing.

Then came a rather indistinct, innocent thud. The tree the horses were tied to gave a great groan, so nearly like a scream as to be shocking in the still wilderness, and then it toppled with an incredible, shattered cacophony. Maka got a glimpse of Morvich's copper mane streaming like a flag as he fled. The earth below her shook, and the heavens above spun. She couldn't hear the thing that Soul heard, but she could hear _something_ , just on the edge of consciousness, the eerie dream of a mosquito's whine. It made her cringe.

The big tree's demise was done, its final cracking lament silent, but twigs were still breaking out in the forest, where the moonlight didn't reach. "Get ready," Soul barked, head cocked.

Maka raised her scythe. The acrid-sweet smell of sap flooded her nose, lush and burning. She could no longer hear the horses running away, only her own laboring lungs, and whatever Soul was hissing under his breath.

* * *

NOTES:

Using 'man' as a friendly-ish slang interjection seems to have indeterminate origin, at least to my casual google-fu, but there's some speculation that it might have gotten popular in the '20s, and i like it for BS, so I'm keeping it. Accuracy not guaranteed for this one.

'Wow' showed up in the early 1920's (along with 'wowee!' which i love), though it was recorded as early as the 1500s as an expression of surprise.

To 'ball up' meant to make a mistake or wreck. A 'balled up' day, therefore, was a day gone wrong.

Yume is Japanese for 'dream', at least according to Google. I wanted to give a nod to Tsubaki's Japanese origins. Also - if the switching between Aka and Morvich is confusing, sorry. Remember it's the same chestnut (red) horse, originally named Morvich and still called so by Maka- but renamed Aka ('red') briefly by Tsu, who still sometimes calls him that out of habit. :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Tapetum lucidum** [təˈpi-təm lu-ci-dum] Latin noun. 1. Layer in the choroid of some animals, causing eyes to reflect light at night. 2. Bright tapestry.

* * *

Black Star generally kept his head well. He was a steady, roll-with-the-punches kind of guy, the very definition of a rock- but when daybreak dawned and two bone-tired horses wandered up to the caboose sans riders, heads hanging low and flanks lathered with pale whorls of seafoam sweat, he very nearly managed to frighten _Tsubaki_.

She grabbed him by the ear and pulled, right in front of everyone, who'd gathered at once to see what was wrong and why Black Star was shouting profanities _this_ time. It was something she knew he hated, but he was scaring Yume and Aka, who'd been through quite enough. " _Be quiet_ ," she said sternly, opening her eyes very wide to dry away the beginnings of her tears. Her brother had taught her that trick, when they were both still small.

Black Star snapped his mouth shut so fast his teeth clicked. Kid, who was standing beside his father, relating the night's events and trying to come up with a plan, gave her a startled look, and Harvar snorted several amused sparks from his nose.

She ignored them and began unbuckling Yume's sweat-stiff girth. "Black Star," she said loudly, focusing very hard on her fingers to keep the stubborn tears from choking her. "We're not going to panic yet."

"Why not, exactly?" Liz put in with a frown. Black Star nodded vehemently, though he still didn't dare speak. Even Chrona, in hiding behind the ferocious Pattie, managed a wobbly nod.

"This does rather seem like the sort of occasion where one mounts a rescue mission, Tsubaki, for Maka and Soul at least, if not that... stowaway," Lord Death added. _His_ voice was level and controlled, she noticed. Only the lashing of his frothy shadow-cloak, which ate up all the sunlight even in broad day and reflected absolutely nothing, revealed his agitation. He was an ugly, stressed-out black scarecrow at the moment, clearly just as upset as everyone else- worried about Soul and Maka, just like she was.

It was a moment of humanity that she rarely saw from her enigmatic employer, protective and just as he was. It brought home as well how dear Maka had become to them all over the past half a year.

Tsubaki stared into Lord Death's empty eye sockets and shrugged, letting Yume's saddle thunk carelessly to the ground and moving to Aka's. She hadn't forgotten how he'd meddled with Maka's memory in the first place, and Black Star's. It had been for a very good reason, and she'd gained a friend from it, but it wasn't the sort of thing she felt _safe_ forgetting. It was too far beyond what she'd once thought possible, at least for… humans.

Her tiger had crawled onto her forearm and was watching her hands move with a thoughtful, narrow gaze like a falling star. Yume's sweat was sticky and warm on her fingers. _Caution,_ she thought, steeling herself, breathing deep. _Take the temperate path._

Fear was always breathing cold and eager at her back lately. She could remember Maka's face so clearly after she'd been bitten by that cursed snake, pale as snow and as still. Of course Tsubaki _wanted_ to gallop off to the rescue, but separating the already divided circus further was a risky idea at best, and a fatal mistake at worst, which was why Maka, ever cunning and logical, hadn't done so in the first place.

There had been so, so many monsters that long midsummer's night, and there were so few riding with the circus. Harsh odds, to be sure. The Dire Circus had been more than strong enough to survive for years before Maka came along, but that huge battle had been a stern and bloody reminder that they were outnumbered, always- and that they never stayed in one place long for a _reason._ This fresh hell with Soul's brother felt like weight on top of weight, though it must be worse for him.

Her tiger blinked reassuringly, lending strength. Tsubaki said at last, "Soul's a terrible rider, and it wouldn't take anything at all to unseat him. And as for Maka, even the best of riders can still get bucked off. The horses would head back here if anything like that happened. It doesn't mean… She and Soul went by themselves for a reason."

"She _did_ say it might only be a dream," Black Star said sourly while re-lacing his boots, having only just noticed that he'd shoved them on the wrong feet in his upset. "I mean- she's not like Jacqueline, or anything, but she's _Maka._ If she thought it was serious enough to go running off in the middle of the night… that's why I let her go, anyway. I trust her. Bearcat's smart."

"I know," Tsubaki said warmly, overtaken by a wave of affection for her own special idiot.

"And at least- at least she _took_ Soul," Chrona whispered, emerging momentarily from Pattie's sweet, if suffocating, grip. "He's… scary."

"That's true," Lord Death sighed. "I mean, would you have been shocked if she ran off all by herself?"

"Noooo," everyone chorused at once, many with sighs and shaken heads.

"Exactly," said Lord Death, sounding suddenly grim again. "However, I find myself a bit more worried than is frankly enjoyable. Tsubaki, shall we give it, say, three hours and then head to the rescue?"

"We'll need to be moving at noon, at any rate, there's a train due southbound through this pass," Harvar put in.

"Two hours?" Black Star suggested, bouncing on his heels.

"Two hours," said Tsubaki hoarsely, resting her forehead against Yume's neck.

* * *

Watching Maka fight was hypnotizing. Soul was almost sad when she snarled, drove her scythe deep into the monster's neck with a sick, grinding squelch, and ended it before he could do more than slice a leg off.

She stood there panting, covered in sweat and mud, glowing in the hellish red of his blade and icy moonlight. "That thing is ugly," she gasped plaintively, planting a boot on it to wrench her scythe free.

"Yeah." It was more spider-like than anything, which made him feel itchy all over. It was big, taller than two of him, but weak enough, for all its size and gnashing fangs- or maybe Maka was just incredibly angry tonight. She was something, anyway. He thought maybe she was also feeling what he _should_ be feeling, since her heart was always so boundless, and she knew _he_ didn't quite know how. "Ugly and dead."

The last word sobered him instantly, wiped away all the buzzing adrenaline from the fight. Wes was almost certainly dead somewhere in these midnight mountains, and apparently Soul's long-lost parents were headed the same way, fast.

What was _wrong_ with him? Was he still the awful person he'd been, to be so cold? He could say it to himself in his head, just like that, could even tentatively try to picture it, but nothing happened. There was no pain in his heart, no devastating wave of sorrow, no grief. He'd mourned for his parents a long time ago, maybe, and Wes was still nothing more than a stranger who'd stolen his face.

"Actually-" Maka said suddenly, pointing at something over his head with a pale, blood-spattered arm. "I think I found our stowaway."

"You _what-"_ Soul put his head back and looked up. "How do you know that's Wes?"

"I recognize the shoes," she said practically, already trotting past him, Mae West in hand. The classy, if incredibly dirty, oxfords sticking out were the only thing that could _be_ recognized, since the rest of Wes was entirely swathed in a cocoon of shimmering grey fibers.

Soul stared at it, feeling very empty, until he noticed one of those shoes twitch.

"Was it going to _eat_ him?" Soul barked, angry again out of nowhere as he reached up and pulled a few branches down, giving Maka easier access. Wes might be related to people who'd done a very bad thing, but he seemed _normal_ , like all the other people the circus protected, the ones who had no idea what terrible evil lurked. He hadn't deserved "Fucking-"

"Mmmmmph! Mmfff!" said the cocoon, thrashing as much as it could. The shoes were wriggling with vigor now.

"Hi, uh, Wes, it's just us, the circus, here to save you,," Maka muttered, obviously trying to be reassuring. "Oops, sorry, cut your nice jacket. Well, I can sew. Almost... There- whoop, Soul, grab him, he's falling-"

It was so strange, touching Wes. He was shaking his head blearily, barely able to stand but still trying to frantically scrape all the remnants of web away, so Soul just kept hanging on to one arm, propping his brother up.

He was holding his brother up. His _brother_ was leaning on him. It was almost too intimate to bear, looking at a face so like Soul's own, after a lifetime of seeing nobody with his eyes or cheekbones or hands. It was bewildering, shocking, wonderful. It felt like belonging, almost like the circus felt. And Wes had _everything_ of Soul's, down to the stupid slouch Maka was always after him about. Looking at Wes felt like-

Wes was looking back at him, and Wes was crying, draped like a saint in a glimmering shroud of tattered web. "I'm sorry," he said, very clearly. "How'd you- what was that _thing_? How did you find me? How did you know- Hadley, I'm sorry. I swear to you I didn't know what happened to you. I was seven, and I was lied to. I'm sorry."

"Soul," Maka said softly, pressing her fingertips over her mouth as if she were about to cry herself, watching with loving, glittering eyes from behind her mask of darkly drying blood. "If you want, he could come back with us. You might like having a brother. If you want. If you want, I'll help."

A new road opened up at once before Soul, fresh and terrifying, as he clutched his shaking brother. He could _see_ it, practically, because he'd done it once already with Maka, the slow and nearly unbearable vulnerability of letting another person in so deep. He knew how it would go, knew he _could_ do it, knew that the possibility of forgiveness was in him now.

It was, as Maka had astutely pointed out, simply a question of _want_ , but before he could do anything, Wes shuddered and straightened up. The way he gathered himself was nearly visible, and Soul found himself rather impressed with such bravery from a civilian. Wes was staring at the carcass of the spider-thing with very large, wet eyes that seemed to soak up all the moonlight. With the pale shreds of spiderweb still in his hair, he was even more a haunted mirror of Soul.

"It's like Mom and Dad," Wes said at last. "Isn't it? Did that thing use to be a man?"

Maka squeaked. "Or a woman," Soul said, too startled to do anything but gape at Wes. "How- you mean- _wait,_ you don't mean our parents are changing too? That's what you meant earlier?"

"I didn't know how far it could go," Wes whispered, patting his hair down with one hand. He sounded dazed, and Soul saw his hand was shaking; brave, yes, but still feeling the fear of this nightmarish, impossible experience. "That thing couldn't even _speak_ , look at it! Oh, God, and I left them alone. So far it's just… they're not like this, and Mom can still talk to me..."

"Wait," Maka said. "Your father can't speak any longer? It's progressed that far? Where in Eddystone do you live?"

"No, he can't, he's got these... teeth... Uh. Not far from the town hall," Wes answered automatically, looking to Soul again; it was like a bucket of ice water meeting his eyes. "Where I was performing when I saw you. Hadley, I want to make this right. Whatever they may have done, whatever's _happening_ to them, it's not- it's not as if they don't deserve it. Dad sold the company without telling anybody, do you know how many people are out jobs? Every man in town worked at the factory, and he just-" Wes made a sharp, cutting motion with his hand. He looked brittle, bitter, as if he might snap beneath everything; Soul realized quite abruptly that his big brother's life was not, perhaps, as charmed as he'd assumed. "No severance packages, nothing. Profits were declining, apparently. He isn't always- he's my father, but he isn't always good."

Soul swallowed. It hurt. "I think what Maka means," he managed, feeling as if he were chewing gravel, "Is that two monsters could hurt a lot of people, right in the middle of a city like that. Usually people run when they start to change, hide out."

She came up to them cautiously, putting one small, cool hand on Soul's forearm and tilting her face up towards Wes'. "I know things are scary and strange for you," she said, and she was alight from the inside like stained glass in that _way_ only she had, all the love and faith and fire in her shining out. "But I've been in your exact shoes before, I promise you, and we'll help you and your parents, but we need to get to Eddystone right away. It's still, what, three or four miles?"

"At least," Wes said, blinking at her, and then looking at her hand on Soul's arm. "Are you telling me they're- a danger?"

"Yes," she told him, very gently. Soul was so grateful to her in that moment, for not making _him_ tell Wes their parents would die or be killed, that he could barely breathe. "I'm so sorry, Wesley."

Wes covered his eyes and looked away, but only for a moment. "My parents have worked enough bad in that town," he said firmly. "If I'd known they'd keep changing until they _hurt_ people, I wouldn't have left them, but it looks like we'd better start moving. Or- well, you two don't have to come. You've done enough, swooping in to save me and all." He gave an awkward little laugh. Soul recognized it as his own, with some internal horror. "This isn't your problem, it's mine. And- this isn't your family, after what they did." The last he said straight to his erstwhile shoes, unable to meet Soul's gaze.

A very nasty part of Soul was enjoying his brother's shame. For just a moment, he thought about hurting him, stepping forward and hitting him the way he'd imagined so many times as a child. What else had there been to dream about except revenge, and the faint hope it might take away some of his unforgivable weakness?

He took a deep breath. Maybe Wes deserved a good ass-kicking, maybe he didn't, but there were innocents in danger, and Maka was watching him with that luminous, evergreen stare, so full of belief. Disappointing her would be as impossible for him as breathing water. "Let's fucking go already, then, if you can walk," he said roughly.

"Good job," Maka whispered, beaming at him. He scowled.

* * *

They weren't sprinting, but it was a near thing. Nobody spoke; nobody had breath to, and anyway, fear held all three of them too strong. Wes was wheezing noticeably, but he kept pace with stubborn determination as they trotted down the center of the railroad tracks. It was smoother and more level here than anywhere else, better at least than picking their way through the forest, but that didn't mean it wasn't easy to keep from tripping on the uneven ties and treacherous gravel.

It got worse as they got more fatigued. The flickering shadows from the trees and clouded skies played tricks on them, made everything ominous; Soul's heart would have been racing even if he weren't. Finally Wes held up a hand. "Walk," he sputtered, and even Maka, red-faced, didn't argue.

They ran as long as they could, and then they walked, and then they ran again, gasping and choking on the bitterly cold night air. It felt like far more than four miles to Soul, but then he generally avoided _running_ whenever possible.

By the time Eddystone's lights sparkled through the trees, a mirage before their swimming eyes, nobody was running. Maka was walking fast, but she looked close to upchucking, and she was leaning on her scythe and half-limping every other step, like she had a blister and didn't want to admit it.

"People will notice her," Wes said airlessly, clutching his chest. Eddystone sat in a shallow valley, and it was a huge relief to begin the downhill leg of their cursed trip, even if it was murder that awaited them at the end of it.

"Fuck." Wes was right. Soul had caught a spray of that stupid spider-thing's unnatural blood on the leg of his trousers, but Maka was absolutely spattered in it. She wiped ineffectually at her face with her sleeve, then shrugged, pushing back sweat-drenched bangs.

"Too late now. We'll take the back way," she decided.

"What? She runs things for a reason," Soul said grouchily, when he caught Wes glancing at them with raised brows.

"I didn't say a thing," Wes said, raising his hands hastily. "I'm not stupid enough to antagonize a bird who just took out something the size of a building, with fangs."

"Well, not _that_ big," Maka said, but she was grinning as she battled her way through some persistent blackberry vines. Soul mentally re-evaluated Wes yet again: brave, _not_ stupid despite initial impressions, impulsive, and an aggravatingly good flirt.

Actually, he was a little bit like Black Star, it seemed.

"Are you okay? Gonna upchuck?" Maka said sympathetically, wiping her forehead again.

" _No,"_ Soul barked. "God! Just- Wes, where do we go from here?"

"Er-" Wes considered that, taking the opportunity to pause and catch his breath. "Well. I usually drive places. I think if we keep going we'll hit the railroad station, though, and I know where to go from there."

"Okay, let's go, then," Maka said urgently. It chilled both the boys, and they looked at each other at once, then away.

* * *

"Not far, now," said Wes, perhaps fifteen minutes later. They were well into Eddystone now, trying not to look suspicious while sidling from dark alley to alley in one shifty, wild-eyed, bloody bunch. Few lamps were lit, but more than one person was out on the streets; enough that Maka tried to hide her scythe behind Wes and his rebellious, spiderwebby cloud of hair.

They were still breathless, even as they forced themselves to keep a reasonable pace through the chilly, fog-soaked streets. Every rare circle of lamplight came out of the dark like an island, and Soul found it harder and harder to leave with each one they passed. He was weary to the bone, soaked in sweat and blood, on his way straight back to the hellish home he'd just escaped, dumb as dirt. The sky was lightening now, burning with streaks of lurid pink, and surely the horses were back at the circus, or would be soon- Yume and Aka knew exactly where _their_ home was.

"Here it is," Wes said.

There was no screaming, no howling. No dog was barking, which was either very good or very bad. The large front door of the fine, three-story brick house was shut, and only one window was lit up, high on the third floor.

"I can't, I can't," Soul said, reaching blindly for Maka's hand. He couldn't look, couldn't see it, couldn't bear the pain he knew was coming. It was all the worse because he'd been there before, could feel the frost creeping into his spirit with exacting precision.

"I'll go-" she breathed, but he shook his head at once, and he heard Wes chuff out a startled breath.

"No. They're my parents," Wes said stoutly, after a moment. "I'll go." Fine words, but his hands were shaking again, and he swayed in place, as if his feet could simply go no further.

Maka shook her head, unsure, looking all around uneasily. Soul knew why- they looked like vagabonds at best, villainous murderers at worst, and soon someone would wake up and wonder why three strangers were lurking in the street before dawn.

He looked at his brother, and he called up the old hunger, waiting for the comforting black to boil away his conscience and his cares. It didn't work. Maka's hand was warm and calloused in his own, and Wes' face was haunted.

The house was silent. Soul went up the steps and opened the door. It was not locked; it swung smoothly inward at his push. There was a wrought-iron doorknocker in the shape of an imp hanging from it, looking heavy enough to take Soul in its impressive jaws at any moment. He eyed it, then went inside. Hadn't he already survived worse?

* * *

It was dark, until Wes did something by the wall. An elaborate chandelier lamp flared to life, and the first thing Soul saw in the wide foyer was a piano. His stomach clenched.

"There's music playing," said Maka, still holding his hand, right at his side.

Soul shook his head, and Wes was frozen. The silence settled again, dust in a tomb. Everything was shiny. Everywhere the eye looked was beauty, but Soul was cold.

Finally Wes jerked to life, went through a doorway, and re-appeared a minute later with a baseball bat and a heavy metal flashlight. He looked at them defiantly, especially as Maka was clutching her scythe now, but Soul was the last person who'd order someone else to kill. He knew what it cost.

"Any servants? A maid?" Maka asked, shaking her head, getting back into business mode.

"No," Wes answered, white and ghastly, throat working as he swallowed. "Uh, nobody live-in. The maids come in a few hours."

Soul followed the music, which he slowly recognized as a recording of Wes' playing, through a maze of ornate rooms. Maka and Wes followed at his heels, Wes aiming the pearly beam of the flashlight ahead. They went to the second floor at first, mistakenly, and then followed the melody back down, through the kitchen.

When Soul pushed open the door to the panty, it fell off its hinges until it leaned drunkenly on one closed latch- closed from the inside. A fine, choking sawdust rose up, furring their throats and scratching their eyes. There were claw marks on the side of the door that had been inside the pantry.

Wes moaned in wild agony, and, distantly, a dog began to bark, somewhere upstairs.

"Is that-?" Maka gasped, whirling around and staring up, as if she could see through all the floors.

"The light that was on… their bedroom," Wes muttered, nearly vibrating, his eyes wet. "Oh, god, that's Potato. He's okay."

" _Potato_?"

"My dog."

"Great, but what about that?" Soul said, kicking the door. He hadn't brought his red blade out yet- he was going to have to answer enough of Wes' questions when this was all over- but he had it ready, burning and eager just below his tender skin.

"Oh," Wes said, staring into the pantry. Then he shut his eyes and sat down in one of the kitchen chairs. "There's nothing there but the wine cellar. Which has _three_ locks. And is Mom's favorite place-"

He couldn't finish. Soul hovered awkwardly beside his chair while Maka went inside the pantry to check that, yes, the Evans parents were safely locked in the wine cellar, unable to hurt anyone. Then she came in and sat by Wes.

"They locked _themselves_ in there. Or Mom did it, at least, somehow," Wes said, after a while. His eyes were raw and red, and he looked older than he had an hour ago. Soul had the feeling he'd been preparing himself for this for a long time in the back of his mind. Still, dubious moral codes or not, they'd been Wes' parents. Tears were to be expected.

They'd been Soul's parents, too, but he had a feeling his own tears would be a long time coming, if ever. But he _could_ do a good thing, he could comfort his brother, so at last he cleared his throat and said, "I'm so sorry."

"They weren't all bad," Wes said hoarsely, his head in his hands as he slumped at the table. Maka had disappeared again, to give them time alone and to rescue poor Potato, and the quiver in his words was all too audible beneath the hum of the electric lights. "I don't know why they did that to you, or any of the things they did- I don't know if they thought you'd be better off, I don't know if Dad told Mom, I don't know why, but I know that you were loved. By me, if not by them." He looked embarrassed at such a confession, but he ploughed on anyway. "And I know that I've- _I've_ done terrible things to people I loved, by accident and on purpose, but I still loved them. People are flawed…"

"I can't forgive them, but I can... I…" How the hell was he supposed to say something so touchy-feely, to this brother that he'd just met? Though the more time he spent with Wes, the more Soul did remember- a scuffle over marbles, an impromptu duet during music lessons, stealing matches from the maid to play firemen with. It was faint, but this man _was_ family, in the same absolutely complete and mysterious way Maka and the rest of the circus were. "They _were_ your parents." Soul sat down at last beside Wes and put a hand on his shoulder, because that was what Maka would do.

"I wonder what it would have been like-" Wes mumbled, glancing at Soul between a cage of familiarly bony fingers. "If they hadn't-"

"Not as good as my life is now," Soul said. "Er, no offense, because I suppose I don't completely hate you after all like I did at… uh, first… but I wouldn't change it. Not even after everything." And Wes still didn't know the half of it, but there would be time for that, and maybe Soul wouldn't even burden him with all of it. Why add guilt on top of guilt?

"Thanks, Hadley," said Wes, collapsing again onto the table. "Does it bother you if I call you that? I know it's not, uh, what you go by now."

"I'd prefer you call me Soul, actually," Soul said, surprised by his own impulse towards honesty. Yet Wes just shrugged and nodded, and they sat there together, listening to the silence coming from the locked wine cellar, and the rapidly approaching yips of Potato.

* * *

"Ouch-" Wes protested, dodging rapid-fire popcorn missiles from Black Star, who was cackling. How the hell did he throw them with so much lethal velocity? The stands around them were packed. It was a cold night, but nobody was complaining. Instead, when Wes looked around, he saw a hundred smiles framed among the glittering constellations pricked into the canvas. It wasn't all that different from the crowds he played for at his concerts- it had the same energy, the same almost palpable, high-wire tension, and he knew his brother would love it the same way. The big top was completely full, alive with laughter, and the Dire Circus had, against all odds and after much pain, returned to Eddystone."Dumb as dirt," was all Hadley had said about it, for reasons he refused to reveal, but he hadn't protested when Maka volunteered them to help clean out Wes' parents' house, and now, at long last, the circus was open to the public.

"Black Star, stop that, it's not nice," Tsubaki said, her lovely lips twitching. " _I_ want to throw popcorn at him!" Only halfway pretending to dodge, Wes had to work _very_ hard not to stare as her flame-orange tiger tattoo winked one eye at him before stretching lazily out along her collarbone. That was another one of those things that had been explained away as, "It's just what happens around here, don't ask questions," by Hadley, but Wes was finding it harder and harder to keep his mouth shut.

 _Soul,_ he told himself, finally managing to catch one of Tsubaki's tosses in his mouth, a great victory over the smug Black Star, who'd been boasting all evening but hadn't managed the same feat yet. Wes was about to rub it in when he was engulfed in a bewildering cloud of perfume, purple, and lace.

"My name's Blair," said the attacker, retreating slightly. It was an almost unbelievably attractive woman with purple hair and shockingly little clothing.

"Hnnn?"

"Yes, and you're Wesley Evans, I know," Blair said, smiling. It was devastating; Wes was reminded strongly of the effect of better strains of moonshine.

"Yes. Yes, I am," he said, rallying at last and with great effort. "Care to sit down?"

"What a gentleman," she said, positively purring, and then she sat on his _lap._ He wasn't entirely sure how to tell her that he'd already come to a sort of understanding with Harvar, the very handsome, sweet and empathetic train conductor, but after some artful giggling and wriggling, she shoved Black Star over and perched on the bench next to him.

Wes' head was spinning even more than it usually did around his brother's circus friends, and his jaw dropped when the already dim lighting inside the massive tent went out in an instant. A single spotlight lit up Lord Death, whose gruesome mask was polished for the occasion.

"Where'd he come from?" Wes whispered to Blair.

She slanted him a wicked look. "Where have you _been_ all my life? Don't ask questions. Ooh, look!"

"Welcome, one and all, to the Dire Circus," Lord Death boomed, at a volume that Wes felt in his bones. "I'm pleased to announce that we've got an especially amazing lineup of performers tonight. If anyone in the audience has a weak heart, we suggest you leave now. Prepare to be astounded, terrified, awestruck- and please, remember to breathe." With a low, sweeping bow, Lord Death melted back into the shadows of the center ring.

A strange piano melody began to play from nowhere at all, so softly as to blend in with Wes' rapid heartbeat. He realized he _was_ holding his breath, staring at that empty ring as it was slowly, completely illuminated; he let it out all in a rush, blinking dry eyes. Blair snickered.

The music increased in intensity, a bounding, joyous crescendo. It was the strangest song Wes had ever heard- nothing like anything he'd played himself, or written, but he thought he could listen for hours. Every note was a surprise.

A curtain he hadn't noticed opened for an instant, and Maka swept in like a storm, transformed and nearly blinding. Her horse alone was a sight to behold, brushed to a glossy shine and prancing parade-horse style, tail flagging high and proud like a spray of blood. Maka was wearing… a crown? No, a _helmet_ , he saw, as she swept by in a flurry of pounding hooves and enchanting music. A winged helmet, as golden as her loose, whipping hair, a valkyrie's crown. She was wearing something black and glittering, equally theatric, but the helmet-

She was as much a warrior now, dancing with her horse and rousing the crowd to a series of breathless, astonished roars, as she'd been trying to rescue his parents, knife in hand and teeth bared, racing through the night. She and her horse thundered around the ring once, twice more, then they skidded to a stop in the exact center, motionless in a moment amid a smoky haze of dust.

The music stopped when they did, perfectly united. It was as if _everything_ had stopped, and everyone was holding their breath. When Wes squinted into the shadows, where Tsubaki had pointed earlier, he could just make out the faintest gleam of red: Soul's mask.

That was all he could see of his brother, but he _did_ see Maka blow a kiss in that direction, an instant before her mount reared high, striking the air with hooves painted gold. The crowd's cheers shook the big top. The music swelled in beautiful harmony as the red horse and his rider surged forward again.

* * *

NOTES:

Caboose: The last car, at the posterior end of a train. Originally used as shelter for the crew, but I think in modern times it's just a random car.

Bird: slang for girl, woman.

The Evans family is rich- they definitely had electricity. homes though 1920 used drop lights, an exposed bulb hanging from the ceiling, usually without a switch like we have today. Also, flashlights were invented around 1900 exactly, so a rich boy like Wes would surely have a nice one.

You know me. Of course the dog lives. Long live Potato! Who is, incidentally, the world's cutest and most wriggly pit bull, if any one's interested.

* * *

WHEW. IT IS DONE. oh boy, i wanted smut in here, but it just didn't work out, sorry. if I write some DC-verse smut one-shots after this I'll put them on my tumblr or on here, in Piano Keys & Dirty Knees (which is all my DC drabbles). Oh, and all the spider foreshadowing was meant to be setup for Arachne (the one who's been following the circus, sending extra monsters after them) to show up, but I just didn't have the energy or inspiration to write that arc after all, I'm sorry. But I suppose you can still consider that canon, actually, she just isn't mentioned by name.

ANYWAY. thank you SO MUCH to everyone who helped me along the way with this, I truly hope you enjoyed it and that I lived up to the spirit of the original Dire Circus (and that I managed to show Soul's growth as well as the 'road less traveled' theme- because that was rough, haha, I'm so proud of him), and don't forget to go look at eisschirmchen's gorgous art on tumblr! Much love!

-RDH


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